When we think about resistance, we often picture dramatic revolutions or public protests. But some of the most powerful forms of resistance have been quieter, more sustained, and deeply collective – women organizing in factories, fields, and street corners to demand basic rights and recognition. From informal workers in India to domestic workers in Brazil and unionized women in South Africa, these struggles share a common thread: women refusing to remain invisible in the labor market. Each case study offers a distinct lens on how gender, class, and power intersect – and how collective action can shift the balance.
Table of Contents
- SEWA and the power of organizing from the margins
- A union, a cooperative, and a bank
- Brazil: domestic workers and intersectional resistance
- The Marcha das Margaridas: rural women take to the streets
- South Africa: women at the forefront of labor and liberation
- FEDSAW and the Women’s March of 1956
- Women unionists and gender policy in the workplace
- What these case studies have in common
SEWA and the power of organizing from the margins
Perhaps no example better illustrates grassroots women’s resistance than India’s Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). Founded in 1972 by lawyer and activist Ela Bhatt in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, SEWA emerged because conventional trade unions were simply not built for women like these – street vendors, home-based workers, agricultural laborers, and domestic workers who had no fixed employer and no formal contract.
SEWA is today the single largest national trade union center in India for women workers of the informal economy, with a membership of 3.78 million poor women workers across 20 states. What makes SEWA remarkable is not just its scale, but its philosophy. SEWA organizes workers to achieve their goals of full employment and self-reliance through a dual strategy of struggle and development – struggling against the constraints imposed by society and the economy, while simultaneously strengthening women’s bargaining power through development activities.
A union, a cooperative, and a bank
SEWA members were organized locally into workers’ cooperatives, producers’ groups, rural savings and credit groups, and social security groups. Although many of the groups were organized by occupation, they also addressed other issues, including education, housing, health care, child care, and violence against women.
One of SEWA’s most tangible victories came in 1974 when it established its own cooperative bank. SEWA established the Shri Mahila Sewa Sahakari Bank as a way to circumvent corrupt banks, moneylenders, and other middlemen. Everything about the bank is determined by SEWA members – the bankers and board members are organization members, the loan rates are set by members, and the funds are entirely from members. For women who had previously been turned away by formal financial institutions due to poverty and illiteracy, this was nothing short of transformational.
SEWA’s guiding principles are rooted in Gandhian thinking – satya (truth), ahimsa (non-violence), sarvadharma (integrating all faiths and all people) and khadi (propagation of local employment and self-reliance). This non-confrontational yet firm orientation allowed SEWA to build bridges across caste, religion, and occupation – forging solidarity among women who shared economic vulnerability even when divided by social identity.
SEWA has facilitated organizing its members into 4,813 self-help groups, 160 cooperatives, 15 economic federations, and 3 producer companies. The model has since expanded beyond India’s borders, with SEWA working to replicate its organizing approach in seven South Asian countries. SEWA also connects workers in the same business within over 50 cooperatives and uses its political influence to lobby for incorporating the informal sector into national economic statistics and economic policies, as well as the provision of social security.
Brazil: domestic workers and intersectional resistance
In Brazil, the struggle for women’s labor rights has been deeply shaped by the intersections of race, gender, and class. The country’s domestic work sector is a powerful illustration of this. In 2018, 6.32 million people in Brazil were employed in the domestic work sector, 93 percent of whom were women and 65 percent Afro-Brazilian women. Their average monthly salary was less than the national minimum wage, 72 percent of them worked without a formal contract, and domestic work was still marked by the legacy of slavery.
Despite this, domestic workers have built one of the most resilient labor movements in Brazil. When the Labor Code was adopted in 1943, domestic workers – predominantly Afro-Brazilian – were explicitly excluded from enjoying full labor rights. Faced with these initial barriers, the domestic workers’ movement built solid partnerships with Afro-Brazilian and feminist organizations, also at the margins of the union movement. They successfully mobilized the multiple social identities of their members, shaped by the intersection of gender, race, and class oppression, to create a shared collective identity of “poor Black women.”
The Marcha das Margaridas: rural women take to the streets
Brazil’s rural women have also forged their own space of resistance. Central to this is the Marcha das Margaridas, a movement named after Margarida Maria Alves, a farmer and activist who became one of the first women to hold a leadership position in a Brazilian trade union. As a union leader, she filed more than 600 labor lawsuits and was an outspoken critic of labor law violations and precarious working conditions.
Coordinated by the National Confederation of Rural Workers (CONTAG), the march has been held in Brasília every four years since 2000 and gathered over 100,000 women in its 2023 edition. Participants travel from across Brazil, funding their journeys through community fundraisers and collective organizing. The march is more than a protest – it is a political statement about the visibility and rights of women who work the land.
The domestic workers’ movement has also developed creative organizing strategies to bypass hostile national frameworks. Particularly noteworthy are their ability to mobilize rank-and-file members outside of the workplace, their creativity in fundraising and organizing with few material or human resources, and their capacity to use different scales of collective action to bypass the federal government. This included a “boomerang effect” strategy – used by social movements to bypass national rulings and seek compliance with international human and labor rights standards.
Brazilian trade unionists have placed themselves at the heart of democratic struggle, as well as campaigns for racial, sexual and gender liberation. This political breadth is crucial: it means that women’s labor organizing in Brazil has never been purely about wages. It has consistently challenged who counts as a worker and whose rights deserve protection.
South Africa: women at the forefront of labor and liberation
South Africa presents a particularly layered case of women’s resistance, where labor rights became inseparable from the fight against racial apartheid. Through their employment in industry, women became drawn into trade unions, and this became a significant motivating factor in women’s resistance against gender inequality and social injustice. The influence of trade unions began to be felt by the 1920s, with women such as Ray Alexander, Hetty McLeod, Frances Baard, and Bettie du Toit taking the lead and empowering the women’s movements.
Sexual abuse, minimal pay, unfair demands, and societal perceptions of female inferiority could no longer be tolerated, motivating victimized women to fight for rights and respect in the workplace. The leaders of the movement, including Johanna Cornelius, Ray Alexander Simons, Emma Mashinini, and Lydia Kompe, found that the most effective way to fight for their rights was through unionization.
FEDSAW and the Women’s March of 1956
One of the most iconic moments in South African women’s resistance came in 1956 with a historic march on the government headquarters in Pretoria. The Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) was founded in 1954 by trade union leader Ray Alexander Simons and Hilda Bernstein. It was strongly supported by a broad range of antiapartheid organizations, including the African National Congress Women’s League and several trade unions.
One of its most renowned activities was a 20,000-strong women’s march on the Union Buildings in Pretoria on August 9, 1956. A phrase from a protest song – “You have touched the women, you have struck a rock” – coined during the 1956 march, became synonymous with the South African women’s struggle. To commemorate the stand taken by FEDSAW’s women, August 9 was later designated Women’s Day in South Africa.
The union movement also became a direct training ground for women’s political leadership. In many ways it was the trade union movements that became the spawning ground for women organizers, and in which women first rose to prominence. Female factory workers learned new methods of organizing and were exposed to the principles of non-racial worker solidarity.
Women unionists and gender policy in the workplace
In the post-apartheid era, South African women workers have continued to push for gender justice within the union movement itself. According to the Labour Research Service, women union leaders report that efforts to advance gender equality within unions are frequently dismissed as secondary concerns by male-dominated structures. Despite this, women have made concrete gains – establishing internal Women’s Forums, drafting sexual harassment policies, and advocating for protections that recognize both their identity as workers and as women.
Reports from Statistics South Africa indicate that unemployment remains persistently high, with women and young people being the most affected. Women continue to carry the heaviest burdens of low pay and insecure work. Yet history demonstrates that women have been the backbone of movements for justice. Trade unions must place more women in leadership positions, address the gender pay gap, and advance policies that promote worker safety and support workers with care responsibilities.
What these case studies have in common
Across India, Brazil, and South Africa, these case studies reveal several shared patterns in how women have organized for change. First, women’s struggles in the labor market are rarely only about wages. They are about recognition – being counted, being visible, and being treated as full citizens with rights. Second, the most effective movements have built solidarity across intersecting identities. SEWA bridged caste and occupation. Brazil’s domestic workers linked their labor cause to the Black movement and feminist organizations. South Africa’s women workers tied labor rights to racial liberation. Third, institutional creativity has been essential. Whether it was SEWA establishing its own cooperative bank, Brazilian domestic workers using international legal frameworks, or South African women drafting gender policies from within unions, these movements have invented new tools when existing ones failed them.
Collective action, in each case, did more than win specific demands. It changed how women saw themselves – as agents, not just victims – and how institutions were forced to respond to them. By coming together, they transformed not only their own lives but the lives of millions more, inducing policy changes not only at the grassroots but also at state and national levels.
What do you think? Women’s labor movements in India, Brazil, and South Africa each faced distinct forms of exclusion – from caste and informal work to racial segregation and colonial labor laws. Do you think the strategies these movements used, such as building cooperatives, forging intersectional alliances, or marching on government buildings, can be applied effectively in other parts of the world today? And why do you think women’s contributions to labor movements have historically been undercounted or overlooked, even within those movements themselves?
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